Possibility: Plan B
by Mystic83
Summary: What if Helo didn’t have Boomer with him on Caprica? What if he had figured out the truth about Sharon Valerii sooner?


This will be a series of stand-alone stories which deal with the choices that the characters on Battlestar Galactica have made throughout the mini-series and first season (I'll be posted in as much of the order of the season as I can). I want to explore what would have happened/changed if things had gone differently. Some of the stories will be angst, some will be shippy, some will be funny. There will be different pairings throughout. Don't feel like you have to check out each one to understand the others. All I ask is that if it intrigues you, then give it a try. Hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed writing them!

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There are pivotal moments in one's life where if you take the wrong path everything may change. Those changes may be for the good or for the bad. The possibilties are endless.

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Sometimes he stares at the massive world outside the bars of his cell and wonders if things would have been different if he hadn't killed her. Maybe he should have given more thought to what would happen if he pulled the trigger.

The consequences of that little movement of his finger. He shook his head in disgust and turned from the window. He had hand delivered himself into this personal hell because of that little twitch of the hand.

Maybe he had made the wrong choice that day. Maybe he should have given it more thought. He knew for a fact that there was at least two other people who would have agreed that there was a lot of things he should have done.

At least, the two of them would agree if only they were still alive.

He closed his mind for a moment before staring at the outside world once more. Caprica had become a shit hole over the past two years. That was one thing he could be certain about.

He laughed at the thought of it. That day when he gave up his seat in the Raptor to Dr. Gaius Baltar, he had given himself two days before being killed by the Cylons. He had figured that it was a fair trade-off. A couple days of squaring himself away to die in exchange for saving one of the brightest minds of their time.

Boomer had kept him alive for two weeks, pretty much blowing away all plans he had made.

He shook his head. No, the thing that had saved him was not Boomer. It had never been Boomer. It will never be Boomer. It was a hunk of machine designed to fool everyone into thinking it had feelings, emotions, human thought.

It had taken him exactly fifteen days to catch sight of another Cylon that looked exactly like the woman he loved. It had taken him fifteen days and ten minutes to accept that Sharon as he knew her was dead, having possibly never existed at all. It had taken fifteen days and twelve minutes to accept what he had to do. It had taken him fifteen days and twenty minutes to put a round full of bullets into the woman he loved.

He could still see the look of hurt and frustration on her face. It was there every time he breathed in and out. It was there every time he blinked. It was there every time his heart beat.

Her voice still rang through his head. She had muttered something about a Plan B and his being a fraking idiot before she slipped away.

He had been too angry to listen at the time. Which was why he hadn't understood what she meant until it was too late and the Cylons had found him. In the back of his head, he told himself that he had just gotten too tired of running towards a goal that didn't even exist. He had no way off the planet, and there was obviously no one coming back to save him. That was the reason why the Cylons were finally able to overtake him.

His heart told him otherwise. After killing Sharon, he had lost the one thing he had been fighting for. There was no reason to keep going. So he had just stopped.

He had loved Boomer practically from the day she got transferred to Galactica and assigned as his partner. Cottonmouth, his old partner, had been stripped of his wings when the Commander found out he had taken to flying while intoxicated. Transferred out almost before he had known there was a problem. He had been mad about losing such a good man, but when he saw Boomer the replacement pilot, he wasn't quite as angry anymore.

She was a complete rookie, straight from Academy. He had shown her around the ship those first few days and tried to get her to accept that she was good enough to fly a Raptor. She had clung to him, and he found that he didn't mind feeling smothered a little bit. Not by someone as pretty as her.

Once she got her bearing, however, she had pulled away from his protective arms and fallen right into the arms of the Chief. He had been so angry the day she confessed that she was dating Galen Tyrol. At the time, he played it off as anger because she was risking her wings for something as stupid as love. Now he knew he was just mad that the Chief had gotten to her first.

It had surprised him when she found him on Caprica and barely mentioned why she would be willing to give up her love for the Chief to make sure he made it back to Galactica. He hadn't dwelled on it because he was so happy to have her there by his side.

In retrospect, knowing it hadn't been the Sharon he originally fell in love with, it all made sense.

When he put two bullets in her head and a few more in her chest, he had believed that he was signing away the last of his humanity. Thinking that there was another human alive and by his side had reassured him in the midst of the hell humanity had created. It had given him a reason to keep fighting, to try to wake up in the morning.

After giving that up, he only had to wait a few days before the Cylons caught him and showed him the error of his ways.

There had been months of solitude, locked up tight in a cell, before he found out he wasn't the only human on Caprica.

Starbuck.

To this day, he had no real clue why she was on Caprica. Hell, when he first saw her, he was pretty sure she was a Cylon. No sane human would have willingly chosen to return to the Cylon-infested planet.

But then, Starbuck had never really been sane.

He had seen her only two, maybe three, times in the past year and a half. When they did see each other, there wasn't much time to talk. They had only managed to do it the first time the Cylons threw them together in a cell. And that was only with great difficulty and a lot of acting.

The door of his cell had creaked open on that day. She had given him a rather fake looking smile before walking right up to him and crushing her lips into his. He had thought at first that she was just happy to see him or maybe she had been sent by the Fleet to rescue him. Either that or it was the Cylons way of completely fraking with him.

Maybe she was a Cylon. It would make sense that the other woman he trusted with his life was also a toaster. The poetic irony of his life.

When he felt her hands reach down to unbutton his pants, he was pretty certain that she was a Cylon.

He had tried to stop her, but she fought him every step of the way. That was when she began whispering in his ear between kisses.

The Cylons wanted to start a new hybrid race. They were convinced that was their purpose for being created. All Starbuck had managed to understand was that they had tried earlier and failed. Now they were using her to test him.

His mind flashed to that night he had spent with Boomer in the forests of Caprica. Had she been under instruction to sleep with him? Was the one real moment of happiness in his whole life part of a Cylon plan?

Her insistent hands tore his mind away from those terrifying thoughts. It was then he realized why she was manhandling him, why she was so desperate to get this over with. There was a sudden urge for him to pretend as if he fainted at the idea that the Cylons wanted him to get Starbuck pregnant. They were using her to test his fertility before forcing a Cylon on him. The toughest woman in the Fleet was being used as a baby machine for the toasters.

It was all over in a few minutes. He would always be eternally grateful to Starbuck for that.

There was barely time to blink or even think about getting more information from her when the Cylons wrenched Starbuck from his arms. He hadn't wanted to let her go. Seeing her there had brought back a little bit of his sanity. It had given him a little more hope that he could figure out a way to go on living.

They sent Starbuck back to him twice in the next two months. It was the same as the first time except she didn't talk any more. He could see the bruises on her body from where she had been tortured and figured it was the Cylons way of keeping her quiet, of making her compliant. She didn't even look him in the eye.

The next month, she hadn't come back. In his heart, he hoped it was because she had found a way out of there, even if that might be through death. But in his head, he knew that it had just meant that the Cylons had succeeded in their testing of him. Starbuck was pregnant.

He had wondered for those first few days about whether or not they would let the child or Starbuck herself live. After that, he washed all memory of his potential offspring from his mind. There was no doubt in his mind that he would never know one way or another. He refused to obsess. At least not about that.

Plus, he never got a chance to really worry about it because, around that time, they started bringing in Model #9, the woman he had previously known as Sharon Valerii. He had wondered why they had chosen this model for him. Was it because they thought his defenses would be down since she resembled the woman he loved? Was it because throughout the whole process, it would hammer home the ruse they had pulled over on the human race, himself included? Or maybe they simply liked to see him in pain?

Either way, the glimmer of hope he had gained in seeing Starbuck alive sputtered out.

Life became the same thing, day after day. In the mornings, he was forced on another Cylon model. In the afternoons, he tried to come up with ways to end his life. In the evenings, he just stared out the small hole of a window the Cylons had had the decency to give him. Caprica was still alive out there, even through all the ashes.

It was on one of these evenings that he first became aware that Commander Adama's son was on the planet.

He had known something was up for days before the incident. The Cylon model sent to him in the morning seemed distracted. Something was not going according to plan. He had no idea what. He hadn't fought them since they took Starbuck away.

He had been staring out the window when he saw that blond bitch model dragging something on the pavement below him. Definitely something unplanned going on. He could feel the Cylons being even tenser than machines should be. It was slightly thrilling that something had gotten to them.

It had taken him only a few seconds to realize that the thing being dragged was a person. He couldn't make out who it was from his position. Whoever it was, they had stirred up some definite shit for the Cylons. He was being repeatedly battered and kicked for whatever he did.

His mind drew back to the question at hand. Who the hell would be on Caprica? Was anyone that stupid?

That was when he heard Starbuck scream. For some reason, the Cylons must have kept her alive even if she had no purpose. He could see her running towards the lump, and it was at that moment he realized who it was.

Captain Apollo.

Why the Commander's son had come to Caprica almost two years after its conquest was beyond him.

There was something extremely odd about the scene below, and it took him a moment to recognize what it was.

Starbuck was openly showing emotion. She had seemed devoid of any emotion the few times he had been allowed to see her in those beginning few months. Hell, she hadn't showed much emotion when they were stationed on Galactica together during peace times. The Cylons had conquered her spirit completely over the past year, and it showed. He had no idea why they wanted to break her. She must have done something big to piss them off that much.

However, he could tell by the way she was cradling Lee Adama in her arms that not all of her emotion had been taken by the toasters. It seemed like her defiance was still there.

They were grasping each other so tightly that it looked almost painful to him. The look of defiance on her face strengthened, almost as if Apollo's presence was fueling her on, recharging her in some way.

That was the moment that it finally became clear to him why Apollo had come to Caprica.

It had nothing to do with him. Or the Cylons. Or the planet of Caprica.

He was there to get Starbuck. He couldn't leave her behind. He loved her.

His mind jumped back to the way he had felt about Boomer. He would have done anything and everything to make sure his partner survived the Cylon massacre. Something as irrational as flying to a Cylon-infested planet, probably under direct disobedience of orders, and taking on a whole race of machines didn't seem that far fetched.

By the time he came to this conclusion, the Cylons had pulled Starbuck and Apollo apart. She was still screaming, but it was now being ignored. They handed Apollo a gun and forced him to his feet. He could hear bits and pieces of dialogue, and that was enough for him to understand.

The Cylons wanted Apollo to shoot Starbuck.

He had never really understood why the toasters seemed so intent on torturing their creator race. They seemed to thrive on it, though. It was almost as if they were testing to see if the humans could take such abuse.

He could hear Starbuck screaming at Apollo to do it. That all she wanted was to die. She was goading him on, alternating insults with desperate pleas.

Normally, he would have just brushed this off as typical Starbuck behavior. A way to distract before she killed everything in sight. But there was something in her voice this time. Something that screamed she wasn't lying. She wanted to die. She wanted Apollo to kill her.

Apollo must have heard it, too, because the next thing to ring in the air was the sound of the gun firing and her body crumbling to the ground. He found himself unable to watch any longer and pushed back from the wall. He stumbled over to the other side of the cell and stared at the wall. At times, the blankness was better to look at then the reality of the planet outside the walls. This was one of those times.

There was another shot.

He didn't need to see it to know that Apollo was dead, too.

The Cylons were being merciful for once.

Still staring at the forests of Caprica, he pulled himself out of the memories of that day. In the end, he had been thankful that Starbuck and Apollo had managed to find a way out. They had gotten mercy in a world where there was none. That didn't mean that their faces still didn't haunt him each night when he closed his eyes.

Again he wondered if he had made the right choice. Maybe keeping Boomer alive might have saved the two pilots' lives. Maybe they would have never flown to Caprica if he had let the Cylon lead him home. Maybe then he wouldn't have these nightmares in his head.

He heard the cell door click open and, without having to open his eyes, knew that it was a Boomer model. They had gotten more unfeeling as they realized he had decided to not love a machine. She hovered over him, and he knew she was wondering if he even had to be awake to serve his purpose.

Fine. Let her think that one over for a bit.

The face of the Boomer he had loved, the one he had flown side by side with, popped into his head. She was the one he thought of when doing his part to create the hybrid race. Every time he felt himself climaxing, her last words to him rang through his head.

She had been right.

Plan B had proven that he really was a fraking idiot.

He opened his eyes and resigned himself to another day.

Maybe this afternoon he would finally come up with a way to make it his last.


End file.
